Time for radical changes to basketball

Rick Pitino raised some eyebrows over the weekend when he suggested that the rise of the one-and-done player has been a bad thing for kids and his sport.

Pitino had the right idea, but went in the wrong direction. Yes, the current system should be trashed. Players should be required to simmer for three years in college or D-League ball before being considered NBA-ready.

Better yet, let’s dump the “student-athlete” thing. Get sports out of college and create a real farm system, owned and operated by the NBA. It would take the best kids, provide a no-frills high school education, train them and then unleash them on the professional world, but only when they’re ready.

For some current players, such as LeBron James, Kevin Durant, or Anthony Davis, moving to the pros would have happened quickly. For others, like JaVale McGee or DeMarcus Cousins, it might have taken some time for the kid in question to mature.

A change has to be made because basketball, the greatest of team games, has become nearly unwatchable at the two highest levels of competition.

Pitino fired the first shot last weekend.

“I’m very much in favor of high school kids going pro,” he said. “I had six young men commit to me out of high school that didn’t go to college, that went to the pros. I’m very much for that because they didn’t want college. They wanted to go to the NBA. And if they go to the (NBA Development League), that’s fine with them. But the six-, seven-month education, online classes second semester? I don’t know what that does for a young person.”

He’s partially right. Sending kids straight to the NBA is a much more honest system, but that didn’t work. Mandating a year of college ball, an NBA rule since 2005, hasn’t improved the situation at either level, either.

The college game is fraught with yawns during the regular season because the most watchable players — who don’t go to Kentucky, that is — have been skimmed off the top by the NBA.

Oddly enough, siphoning the top talent hurts the NBA product, too. The quality of play in the Association has been dropping off, even as marketing and the star-making mechanisms have been working overtime. The NBA — other than the Spurs — becomes less and less attractive every year as it turns into a star-based league.

Forbes writes that the opening night game on TNT had a 1.5 rating and 2.3 million viewers, or 48 percent fewer viewers than last season’s opener. The next night, with James and the Cavaliers playing, however, the telecast got a 2.6 rating and 4 million viewers. On ABC, ratings for the last two NBA doubleheaders were at a five-year low, according to Sports Media Watch.

In other words, basketball wasn’t a big deal on the first night, but LeBron was a big deal on the second night.

A compelling basketball game, between two squads of unknowns at any level, beats a bad game loaded with stars at the highest level.

Put another way, for a basketball purist, there are probably better CYO games being played at the Mission Concepcion rec center than on a televised NBA doubleheader featuring Orlando, New York, Brooklyn and Minnesota.

That’s the kind of stuff that drives NBA Truthers insane.

Instead of ruining basketball at both the NBA and D1 college levels, maybe the NBA could form regional basketball academies.

Kids from eighth grade and up would try out for the academies. If admitted, they’d take classes and play ball. At a certain age, they could try out for the senior draft pool. If they made it, they would be drafted or signed as free agents.

These ideas will upset the NBA Truthers. I have not run this idea by corporate lawyers or labor experts. The whole concept might be illegal, but at least it wouldn’t be boring.